


Ice on Fire

by lonelywalker



Category: Nikita (Music Video)
Genre: Cold War, East Berlin, Elton John - Freeform, M/M, music video
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 01:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Genderswapped interpretation of the video to match Elton John's intentions regarding the song. Nikita's a man, but it's still very cold in his corner of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ice on Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [st_aurafina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/gifts).



> I will make no pretense of having done any research for this bar watching the video, so my Soviet culture may be a tad off.

It’s cold.

Berlin has its days of utterly unforgiving heat in the summer months, when the Soviet uniforms go beyond uncomfortable and border on torturous. This winter, though, there’s been snow upon snow, with the local East German laborers tasked every day with clearing the drifts from the checkpoint. They rarely do it very well, bored and unmotivated and just as cold as everyone else. Nikita comes from farm stock, has stomped through more snow than these Germans have ever seen, but that doesn’t stop his toes from freezing.

He’s standing outside, huffing hot breaths on his fingertips, numb even inside gloves, when he sees the American. _The American._ Nikita knows he has a British passport, even knows his real name, but the others are insistent on drawing out this joke. The way he dresses, the car his chauffeur drives… It’s everything they’ve come to expect from the garish Americans who have more clothes than class.

Nikita has been stationed in Berlin for nine months. He had been thankful for the assignment – the opportunity to see the world beyond Russia, and beyond even the Soviet Union on occasion. The few times he’s escorted officials into the West, however, he’s been glad of the uniform and the anonymity it has afforded him. If the Wall were to fall, if he were to be here on his own as a tourist, he knows the Westerners would laugh at him more than his soldiers ever laugh at the American.

“Passport please.” He doesn’t dream that his English is particularly good to the American’s ears, but it’s understandable at least. His German is better, courtesy of classes more intense than he’d ever experienced in high school.

The radio is playing in the American’s car: truly American pop music, Nikita thinks, and the American mouths the words as Nikita studies his passport yet again. He comes through here often enough – some kind of journalist, but no one controversial enough for anyone to care. Nikita glances at the camera next to him on the seat. “You were taking pictures.”

There’s a pause, and enough puzzlement in the American’s eyes to make him think he had made a mistake in his English, that he had somehow garbled the words. But perhaps it’s just the unexpected divergence from their usual routine. “Yes,” the American says with an English accent and a hint of a smile.

“Please don’t do that.” Nikita’s tone is supposed to be harsh enough to brook no argument, or even reply as he stands back from the car, letting it pass.

The American’s smile broadens. “But you look so pretty in that hat.”

Nikita reaches up to touch it so quickly that he almost knocks it off as the car drives through the checkpoint, clearing his throat and turning with a glare towards anyone who might have seen.

It’s easiest to interpret the comment as an insult. Nikita should probably have hit him, in fact: they’re in East Berlin and on his territory. His superiors would have been irritated, but maybe even quietly pleased, and no one… Certainly no one would ever think _anything_ untoward about Nikita himself. A good Communist farm boy, a good Communist soldier with love in his heart for Mother Russia.

In the barracks at night, he lies awake and tries to imagine in his mind’s eye where the American goes on the other side of the border. He knows the road there, but there are so many turnings, and so many possibilities. Does he go to a hotel, a private house, a newspaper office? Perhaps he drives far beyond Berlin, to France, to England. Does he have a family? A wife, a… lover? Attempting to imagine the whole vastness of the West from this little snow-swept corner of the world seems almost impossible.

Still, he can’t have gone far. The next afternoon, there he is again, requesting access to the East, camera on his lap and a letter falling into Nikita’s hand when he opens it up. “What is this?”

“What’s your name?” The American asks. It’s difficult to see his eyes behind the glasses, under that ridiculous straw hat, but Nikita thinks he finds sincerity there. He’s not being mocked.

If he says anything, he should give his rank and family name. He should. “Nikita,” he finds himself saying instead.

“Nikita,” the American repeats. “You will never know…”

“Sir! We need you on the radio!” One of the younger soldiers hurries up, salutes, and almost grabs the passport from Nikita’s hand before he can slip the letter into his coat pocket. “I’ll take over here, sir.”

Nikita goes, and doesn’t look back.

He doesn’t get much sleep that night, borrowing an English-Russian dictionary on the pretense of having to fill out yet more boring forms in triplicate for his US counterpart on the other side of the border. No one ever really cares about forms. The letter is mercifully short, and even with Nikita’s imperfect English, it’s clear what it is: his first ever love letter.

He won’t think about it, _can’t_ think about it, but he takes the stairs to the roof three at a time until he can feel the icy wind on his face as it shakes him to his senses. How had he _known_? That’s the most worrying thing. Does it show, somehow, shine out even through the dull grey uniform?

But no. It has to be a stab in the dark. A crazy homosexual from the decadent, immoral West, who… who probably writes letters to every good Russian soldier he sees. It might even be a CIA plan. They’re always trying the strangest things. It’s a plot to sow discord in the ranks. It’s…

Nikita sits down on a raised section of the roof, the snow barely even melting beneath him. The night sky is clear, stars almost as bright as they had been from his family’s farm. He counts them while he catches his breath, makes himself calm down. He’s at forty-five before the thought occurs to him:

 _What if it’s real?_

They’ve barely exchanged ten words, none of them personal, but stranger things have happened. Nikita’s own uncle had fervently claimed that he’d fallen in love with his wife just by seeing her across a crowded room. Nikita might not be the most brilliantly handsome man in East Berlin, but his Aunt hadn’t been a great prize either. And…

Suddenly he wants more than anything to get the American into a room, to ask him everything, to find out if he had meant the words in the letter.

But if he had?

If he had… Nikita is still a soldier in the Soviet Army, and this is still East Berlin.

He barely sleeps, going through the usual procedures the next morning with bleary eyes and an even foggier mind until the American arrives. It’s difficult to miss him: red car, black jacket with, inexplicably, golden stars all over it.

“Passport please,” Nikita says briskly. Then, once it’s safely in his hand: “How did you know?”

The radio is still blaring, and there’s a moment when he’s sure that the American either hasn’t heard him, or doesn’t understand his meaning. “You’re the only one who ever says ‘please’,” the American says. “And you look absolutely _divine_ in that uniform.”

Nikita keeps his eyes on the passport. It’s difficult. “I had a dream about you last night,” he says, and those words are the single most unprofessional thing he’s ever done in his life. He can feel the bite of adrenaline, the sting of fear, but most of all it feels _good_.”

“I had a dream about us too,” the American says. “Nikita…”

And the passport is snatched out of his hand, his superior barking admonishments at him for holding up the line, for fraternizing with the Americans. Nikita retreats back to the safety of the watchtower just as the American protests in an amused tone: “Actually, I’m from Watford.”

There’s plenty for Nikita to do, plenty to worry about: ten men under his command, the icy roads, the bitter cold, the processed meat for lunch, the remaining months he’ll spend here in East Berlin. There’s no reason at all for him to think of the American once his car has passed through the barricade and disappeared up winding streets.

Where does he go? Who is he, in his life beyond the border, on the other side of the line? And what had he really expected from this frozen soldier whose life can be measured out in the steps of the men who patrol the gates?

The snow is falling again, and Nikita pulls his collar up as high as it can go, stuffs his hands in his pockets, fingers rustling against the love letter.

He pulls it out and tears it to shreds, stamping it into the snow, obliterating the words with his heel.

Whatever the answers, they don’t bear thinking about.

Nikita will never know.


End file.
